Linger
by Midnight Spiral
Summary: Even though Maria is dead, her Innocence slave to another through sorcery, she lingers on, angry and betrayed, in the deepest parts of the Order.
1. Linger

**A/N: So, this is a short one-shot that looks at Maria's feelings about some stuff. Tried to take a different view of her. Anyway, please enjoy. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own D. Gray Man or any of its characters or plotlines. **

**-oOOo- **

Maria didn't remember how long it had been, since her life and Innocence had been stolen. Not yet long enough that she'd stopped cursing herself for a fool for having trusted that bastard General Cross.

Not that he'd killed her-except by neglecting his duties, and the Order refused to admit that his neglect was murder. Even when he so blatantly profited from her death, chaining her body and Innocence to him through unholy sorcery.

But not her soul. And not her truest voice, which had sounded in a Parisian opera house until Innocence had clipped its wings. She used it now, sparingly, a song in the dark to summon ghosts from the past and banish her loneliness. Deep in the Order, where her voice echoed back to her, she imagined she wasn't so alone and sang the Barcarolle from Offenbach's _Les Contes d'Hoffman: _

_Le temps fuit et sans retour  
Emporte nos tendresses,  
Loin de cet heureux séjour  
Le temps fuit sans retour._

_Zéphyrs embrasés,_  
_Versez-nous vos caresses,_  
_Zéphyrs embrasés,_  
_Donnez-nous vos baisers!_  
_vos baisers! vos baisers! Ah!_

_Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour,_  
_Souris à nos ivresses,_  
_Nuit plus douce que le jour,_  
_Ô belle nuit d'amour!_  
_Ah! Souris à nos ivresses!_  
_Nuit d'amour, ô nuit d'amour!_

She remembers well the last time she was allowed to sing that song, back when she still lived free. The Opera House had been packed; even the box traditionally left empty for the Opera Ghost was occupied, with men and women dressed in oddly somber black clothing gazing down at her. In _Les Contes d'Hoffman_, she always played Olympia and Giulietta, not because she couldn't sing Antonia, but because she preferred their characters. That she became a doll girl in the end was of no consequence at the time, though she found it ironic later.

That night, all went well, right up until the Barcarolle. As she began to sing, she noted a few guests rising as if to leave, which irritated her immensely-didn't they know what intermission was for? She considered interrupting the song to chastise them-after all, she was prima donna, and to leave during her solo was an insult- when a flash of light caught her eye. Something bright and shining flew at her as she continued to sing, hitting her in the throat.

She faltered then, a slender hand fluttering at her throat, but she could feel nothing. Her voice rang out again, angry now, soaring higher than she meant it to, and she saw the people who'd been leaving stiffen and return to their seats. She made it through the rest of the performance before returning to her dressing room and being assaulted by the sight of a cross embedded in her throat. And by the time the sun rose again, she'd been a slave of the Black Order.

-oOOo-

But she wasn't angry. Not really. She'd argue (if anyone cared to) that her new, sardonic tendency to stalk lost members through the bowels of the Order was a manifestation of boredom rather than anger. The young Science Division brat, Johnny, and Chief Officer Lee's little Exorcist sister, Lenalee, would always react in such a satisfying manner.

But her meddling attracted attention, first in the form of Reever (whom she'd always liked), then with the bumbling idiot Komui Lee himself. She never allowed either of them to gaze upon her ghostly form, only sang snatches of song, wordless but high and free, in response to their queries.

In the fathomless dark, other ghosts of the Order gathered around her, formless shades who wandered where they chose unheeded. They brought her news of the Battle in Edo, the Ark, and the new Exorcists. She cared very little, except for the part about Cross using her body in the battle against the crazed Noah of Pleasure. That pissed her off.

It wasn't long after she learned of these things that she had visitors of import. The first one she saw was Rouverlier, and the so-called Doll Song she'd been singing to herself took on new meaning in his presence:

_Les oiseaux dans la charmille  
Dans les cieux l'astre du jour,  
Tout parle à la jeune fille d'amour!  
Ah! Voilà la chanson gentille  
La chanson d'Olympia! __Ah!_

_Tout ce qui chante et résonne  
Et soupire, tour à tour,  
Emeut son coeur qui frissonne d'amour!  
Ah! Voilà la chanson mignonne  
La chanson d'Olympia! Ah! _

As she finished, she was grimly pleased to see her corpse float from the shadows with Cross in tow. Her body began to sing, but only remembered songs of her Innocence, high, wailing laments without beauty or technique. At the rate the voice in that body was deteriorating, it wouldn't be long before even those notes were beyond it. She began to sing as well, starting with a run of arpeggios up to the note her body could do no justice to. As she trilled ever higher, she stalked out of the shadows, the prima donna within her demanding attention. She knew what the bastard general and Rouverlier saw; a washed-out spectre, flickering in the half-light, the only vibrant parts of her being her unrestrained chocolate locks and the deep umber eyes which accused them.

In the end, her body's voice gave out, and Maria soared higher in triumph, until she sang a resonant note into the silence, her trademark vibrato the only evidence of its earthly bonds. She cut off as suddenly as she'd begun, glaring at the men opposite her with hate.

Cross clapped, slowly, mockingly. "Bella diva."

Her head snapped toward him, eyes narrowing, nostrils flared in offense, an arm rising to point at him, a condemnation. "You. You are a fool. One day soon, you will need that voice to sound and it will fail you, and you will wish that you had saved me so that I might save you. Your death will go unacknowledged and unavenged, as mine did, and you will wander your afterlife tormented by you own stupidity reflected in that choice. And then, when your very soul, black and rotten as it is, is on the brink of destruction, we will be even, you and I."

She disappeared, leaving them without a sound to storm through the depths in her impotent rage.

It did no good to rage at them. It never had.

But it sure as hell made her feel better.

**-oOOo- **

**A/N: So, anybody like it? I thought she might be spunkier than her body's compliance suggests, with an ego to match…..The songs are French, but the English translations can be found quite easily online, by searching the title (as written in the story) and the composer, Offenbach. If anyone cares.**

**Love it? Hate it? Want more? Let me know! **


	2. Grief

**A/N: I know I said this would be a one-shot, but an anonymous reviewer prompted me to look at their relationship again, so here we are. This chapter is dedicated to that reviewer; I hope they like it. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own D. Gray Man or any of its characters or plotlines. **

**-oOOo- **

Maria had an odd feeling, one that had persisted ever since her operatic duel with her body. She could sense the Grave of Maria, bound in space, following Cross wherever he went. She wasn't sure how she felt about that; she was definitely irritated that he was still using her body, but beyond that…_Does it really matter anymore? It's not like I need it now._ That was another part of the odd feeling: never before had she been anything other than angry about him using her body as his weapon, but she found herself filled with apathy now.

There was a sense of danger in the Order now, even after all the crises that had occurred. Maria blamed it on Rouverlier; the man was a zealot, ruthless when it came to achieving his goals and carrying out orders. He and Cross were at odds right now, which she found…disturbing. It was a dangerous game the two of them played, a game only one of them could win. She found herself pacing the corridors leading to Cross' quarters, at war with herself again. If it was to harm Rouverlier, she didn't think she minded Cross using her body; she'd recently decided which of the men she despised more, Rouverlier being the unlucky winner.

Her slender brows knit in consternation when she looked up and found herself outside Cross' door, the two guards staring at it in terror. As one guard ran off to find Rouverlier, a crash came from the interior, and she slipped through the door as the remaining guard slammed it open, then came to a sudden stop. Blood, on what was left of the broken window and the floor, Judgement lying discarded in the pool of blood on the floor. And on the sill…Cross' mask, with great chunks missing from it, indicative of head wounds. Cross himself was nowhere to be seen.

Rouverlier's little pet Crow, Howard Link, arrived first, his eyes widening at the scene before him, and widening further when he saw her. "Who are you? Are you responsible for this?"

From the door came another voice. "A just question, Link. Did you finally have your revenge on General Cross, little Maria?" Rouverlier strode into the room, staring her down.

Her hands curled into fists at her sides at their nerve, and she stepped forward, bypassing Link, and aimed a punch at Rouverlier's jaw. He braced himself for an impact which never came, her intangible fist passing through his head without harm. "Now that would be a trick, Inspector." Stepping back, she wandered over to the window. "I had made my peace with Cross. You were there."

"That didn't look very peaceful to me."

"It was. I told him how I felt, and he responded as I knew he would."

"And all thoughts of revenge were wiped from your heart? This I don't believe."

She shook her head, kneeling in the blood without care to trace her fingers over the broken mask, never touching it. "He loved me, in his way. And I him, in mine." She stood, her gown eerily untouched by the blood, and turned to Rouverlier. "We were never perfect together, him and I. Too much ego, on both our parts." She flicked an imaginary piece of lint from her skirts, avoiding his eyes. "Then I died, and he bound my body to him, and I felt…so betrayed. So used. I had told him that all I ever wanted was to be free of this war, and he denied me that even in death." She shook her head, teary-eyed, as she crossed to the window again, bracing herself against the sill and gazing out, her back to the room. "But…he kept me beside him because he wanted me with him always, right? Out of love for me? That thought…made me incredibly happy, for a time. But my soul is also bound here, and I am tired." She turned back to Rouverlier, meeting his gaze frankly. "I wanted him to let me go, so I could rest. But I would never try to harm him to achieve that goal. And now…"She tapped a booted foot against Judgement, sorrowfully. "Now, the Grave of Maria is his only protection, his only weapon. I must resign myself to lingering here for a while more, until he dies or returns. But I suspect that I will remain here until the end of this war…If not beyond it."

She disappeared, returning to the deepest hole she knew of in the Order in her grief. Grief for Cross, and what might have been, as well as for herself, chained here in the dark, friendless and alone. In the following weeks, she moved with the rest of the Order to the new headquarters, but was not seen, having given up amusing herself in the endless dark. She never told anyone of her connection to her body, tenuous as it was; let Cross be free, if that was what he desired.

But she could never give up trying to ease her loneliness, and in the years before the war was ended, the ghostly echoes of her voice, coming from the nameless dark, gave rise to legend. And even after the war, when the Order was mostly abandoned, she lingered on, both in spirit and in legend, until the day Cross returned for her. Only then did she allow herself to fade away.

**-oOOo- **

**A/N: So, there it is, and now it's done for real. I actually enjoyed writing that; it was fun to look at it from that perspective. I hope people like it and don't mind its shortness… **

**Anyway, please review and let me know how you felt about it! **


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